


Secrets

by ElZacharie



Series: Drabbles [24]
Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: F/M, First Kiss, No Dialogue, Spin the Bottle
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-17
Updated: 2019-07-17
Packaged: 2020-06-30 00:52:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 781
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19842115
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ElZacharie/pseuds/ElZacharie
Summary: Yeza has a secret that he wishes he could tell.





	Secrets

**Author's Note:**

> for an anon on tumblr. took me a long time to get inspiration and i apologize, but i fell so deeply in love with this one i decided i wanted to post it to AO3. ive been part of the cr fandom since a lil before cr2 (i think), but ive been unable to really write anything, especially out of fear of getting character voices wrong. i love yeza a lot, especially since he reminds me of myself a lot.

Yeza Brenatto had a big, dirty secret. A secret so big that if he told anyone in the village, anyone at all, he’d be the laughingstock. His parents would probably disown him, his brothers and friends would chase him out of the village… he’d probably have to become a hermit in the woods, a shrine to his secret hidden in the boughs of a tree, like a shrine to an outlawed god.

The thought of his secret made him so nervous that he’d often rush to the nearest bush, puking up his guts with how sensitive his stomach was. Sometimes he’d even stop in the middle of the streets, carrying a heavy bag of supplies in his arms, just to watch his secret walk by.

Maybe it wasn’t much of a secret, he thought, staring into the firelight of the campfire as his friends spun an empty bottle of wine and kissed each other. Someone had sat him right next to his secret, forcing him to hand anything she asked for and gently graze fingertips every time.

Yeza Brenatto had a big, dirty, not-quite-so secret. And that secret was named Veth.

She said she’d only come because her parents forced her brothers to bring her along, that she didn’t even want to be here. She spent most of her time by the fire crafting a necklace from string and a seemingly endless bag of buttons of different shapes, colors, sizes, so methodical and precise in a way that mesmerized him. Whenever she popped a marshmallow into her mouth, not even bothering to look up from her work, Yeza couldn’t help but travel the path of her fingers to her mouth, lingering on her lips as she chewed.

When the bottle of wine was emptied and spun, crushes locking lips with crushes, Yeza nearly ran into the bushes at the thought of being able to kiss Veth for the first time, but he thought better of it— he didn’t want to remember his first kiss being the one where he tasted like vomit.

When it came for Yeza to spin the bottle, Veth finally looked up from her work, though her fingers still threaded buttons, albeit at a slower pace. Taking a deep breath, he spun the bottle, and prayed to whatever god might be listening to reveal his big, awful, dirty secret in the best way possible.

In her retellings of their first kiss, tipsy on the same wine they drank that night, Veth will claim many things. She will say that her smart, handsome, wonderfully clever husband figured out the amount of inertia the bottle needed to land exactly on her, just shy of the prettiest girl in the village, or perhaps the cutest boy. She will say that the gods fated for them to kiss, and that he kissed her like a man possessed, sweeping her away to make out on the cool beach, the tide nipping at their heels.

In reality, it was just plain old luck that caused the bottle to land on Veth.

Everyone told him he didn’t have to kiss her if they didn’t want to, even though they’d been jeering at each other for trying to weasel out of kisses with those they weren’t related to. Even Veth herself told him she wouldn’t mind if he said no, though the sadness in her smile, the way she couldn’t look him in the eyes when she said it, told him everything she needed to know. 

Gently cupping her cheek with one hand, Yeza leaned forward, eyes half closed as his saliva slicked lips pressed against her own chapped ones. He lingered far longer than he should have, the tip of his tongue swiping against her lips, just like the protagonists in the smut he read under his covers did when they wanted to take their kissing a little deeper. 

When he pulled away, the world had gone silent. Veth was as still as a deer in a hunter’s sights, and the rest of the group was no better, staring at them with their jaws slack. His face quickly grew bright red and, mumbling an apology, he ran off into the night, puking into the bushes once he felt far away enough to be heard.

The next day, everything changed. People were quieter in their gossip about the strange Veth girl down the lane; his brothers and his friends gave him odd looks, but were awkwardly friendly nonetheless.

And if he realized that morning that Veth had slipped a button into his pocket before he’d run away, well, that was his new secret to hold onto. That, and maybe stealing more kisses behind his father's shop.

**Author's Note:**

> transyasha.tumblr.com


End file.
